Tag Archives: Covid-19 lockdowns

Lockdown is the ultimate safe space for leftist sheep, and now they’re afraid of returning to real life, by Rachel Marsden

Posted on May 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

When did absolute safety become the most important aspiration for so many people? How can they live so neurotically? From Rachel Marsden at rt.com:

Lockdown is the ultimate safe space for leftist sheep, and now they’re afraid of returning to real life
© Getty Images / MoMo Productions
Countries are starting to open back up again, but not everyone is happy. Many of those on the Left are worried about having to emerge from hiding from the virus at home and get back to dealing with the demands of everyday life.

A Google search of the phrase “I’m anxious about lockdown ending”, or for similar terms on social media, reveals a number of people who really took it to heart when the state sold them on the idea of home being a safe space from the virus.

Now that lockdown is being lifted, they’re worrying about having to go back to socializing normally with people instead of living largely behind a computer screen. They’re nervous about venturing out into a world of non-zero risk where Covid is still lurking. Many also apparently enjoyed lockdown because it alleviated their Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). 

During lockdown, there were far fewer posts on social media showing people having a great time traveling or partying, thereby making others feel as though their own life was lacking. The government ordered everyone to become homebodies during the pandemic, and suddenly those who didn’t particularly enjoy their life or want to take responsibility for improving their lifestyle found themselves in the same boat as the people who had pre-pandemic lifestyles they envied.

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Covid-19 fear porn has cast a chill over love, sex, and birthrates, and we were damn fools to let it happen, by Robert Bridge

Posted on May 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Evidently, people can be scared out of sex, or perhaps familiarity doesn’t breed anything but contempt. From Robert Bridge at rt.com:

 
Covid-19 fear porn has cast a chill over love, sex, and birthrates, and we were damn fools to let it happen
©  Getty Images / Elisaveta Ivanova
 
Instead of allowing the human spirit to triumph in the face of adversity, we cowered in our homes, prevented children from learning and playing together, and let our small businesses go up in flames. History will judge us badly.

Since it is well known that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, it should come as no surprise that it also does little to breed babies. Even the most amorous lovebirds will go frigid when their wings have been clipped and predictions of impending doom scream from every mainstream channel. That may be the main takeaway from the radical experiment known as Lockdown 2020, as the US birthrate took an unexpected hit at a time when all the indicators were looking rosy.

The US birthrate didn’t just go wobbly last year, it plummeted a whopping four percent, marking the worst single-year decrease in nearly 50 years. To further break it down, birthrates fell eight percent for Asian American women, three percent for Hispanic women, and four percent for African American and Caucasian women. Locked-down Europeans are reporting similarly precipitous declines.

And no, this decline was not the result of caged couples wisely resorting to safe-sex practices. Sales of Trojan condoms slumped six percent during the three months ending Sept. 30, 2020, coming on the heels of a 13 percent decline in the previous quarter. In other words, when you hit ‘pause’ on life you may succeed at ‘flattening the curve’, but you will also flatten the libido.

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The “Miracle Recovery” Narrative: We’ll Just Print Our Way to Prosperity, by Claudio Grass

Posted on May 5, 2021 | 1 comment

The only thing the still locked-down European economy has going for it is the European Central Bank. From Claudio Grass at mises.org:

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been constantly bombarded by news reports and “expert” analyses celebrating an incredible global economic recovery. They’re not even presented as projections or expectations anymore, but as a fact, as though the return to vibrant growth were already underway. Stock markets certainly seem to agree, going from record high to record high while all the political and institutional leaders congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Although this is largely the consensus in most Western economies, this jubilant, victorious mood feels most bizarre in Europe. Celebrating a recovery during a third round of total lockdowns, closed shops, travel bans, and millions out of work seems like cognitive dissonance at best, or barefaced political hypocrisy at worst. France, Italy, Germany, Austria, they’ve all launched yet another round of business shutdowns and heavily restricted social activities and freedom of movement. And they did that to combat what they labeled a terrible, deadly third wave of infections and hospital overcrowding. In fact, to convince the public of the dire need to go back into lockdown, they painted postapocalyptic visions of a virus-overrun nation and sounded the alarm on the imminent collapse of their public health systems. Under these extreme conditions, these existential threats, closely resembling a state of national emergency, it is really quite challenging to see how the economy might be flourishing.

One could argue that the trillions that were printed by the ECB and helicopter dropped on member states actually achieved their aim and successfully rescued and restarted the economy. However, it is still hard to fathom how injecting any amount of cash into a forcibly frozen economy can restart economic activity and jump-start productivity, given that it’s still largely illegal to be economically active and productive. In other words, you can pump as much fuel as you like into your car, but if the engine is dead, you probably won’t go very far.

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Water Cannons? Tear Gas? by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on March 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

During the entire coronavirus outbreak, there has been virtually no official mention of how people can bolster their immune systems. The old maxim that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure is apparently a forgotten dead letter. However, there are ounces of prevention for Covid-19, and they work a hell of a lot better than lockdowns, about which people are getting increasing incensed and taking to the streets. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at theautomaticearth.com:

[..] the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks, water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges, dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in

Bob Dylan, Jokerman

I’ve seen huge amounts of riot police in many cities this weekend, in Holland, Germany, UK, Sweden, Canada, Florida and money more places (Miami Beach declared a state of emergency), using water cannons, horses, dogs, in some cases tear gas, to disperse relatively small and peaceful crowds. These things are normally used in case of serious rioting. But now the “justification” is that people are standing and walking too close together, and not obeying the “measures” and restrictions.

But that is exactly what they’re protesting. If you protest the measures, and they say you can only do that if you comply with those same measures, which includes asking permission beforehand, that is not a protest, that is theater. And the right to protest is not something that can just arbitrarily be taken away in a democratic country. Until now. Until Covid came along.

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More “Covid Suicides” than Covid Deaths in Kids, by Misha Gartz

Posted on March 18, 2021 | 1 comment

Keeping kids locked up, away from school and friends, does them a world of good. Some of them like it so much they kill themselves. From Misha Gartz at aier.org:

Before Covid, an American youth died by suicide every six hours. Suicide is a major public health threat and a leading cause of death for those aged under 25 — one far bigger than Covid. And it is something that we have only made worse as we, led by politicians and ‘the science,’ deprived our youngest members of society — who constitute one-third of the US population — of educational, emotional and social development without their permission or consent for over a year.

And why? For what?

We were scared. We were scared for our lives and those of people we love. And, like your average German-on-the-street in the 1930s and 40s, we believed that doing what we were told and supporting the national cause would save us and our families.

The reality is we sacrificed others without a second thought. We have sacrificed our youths’ lives and future livelihoods in a desperate attempt to save a slim minority of the elderly population who have surpassed the average US life expectancy of 78.8 years and those who were already on their way out.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Education, Government, Law, Medicine, Psychology

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The One-Year Anniversary of Lockdowns, by Edward Peter Stringham

Posted on March 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

One year later, not even the lockdowners are arguing that the lockdowns have worked. From Edward Peter Stringham at aier.org:

One year ago, between March 13 and 16, 2020, began what most of us would agree were the most difficult days of our lives. We thought our rights and liberties were more or less secure or could only be hobbled on the margin. We took certain things for granted, such as that our governments would not – and could not – order us to stay home, close most businesses and schools, shut down travel, padlock churches and concert halls, cancel events, much less lock down society in the name of virus control. 

All that changed with a federal document issued March 13, 2020, and declassified three months later. It was the lockdown guidelines. Over the following days, governors panicked. People panicked. Bureaucrats were unleashed. All the powers of the state at all levels of society were deployed not on the virus but on the people, which is all that governments can really control. The lockdowns were nearly universal, implemented around the world but for a few holdouts, one of which was in the US (South Dakota). 

A year later, most states are opening up while those still clinging to lockdowns can no longer control people. Regardless of warnings from the top that going back to normal life is too dangerous, most people have decided to be done with the whole dreadful episode. 

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, History, Medicine

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Lockdowns Wrecked Democracy around the World, by James Bovard

Posted on March 13, 2021 | 1 comment

The lockdowns have destroyed the last vestiges of both democracy and civil liberties. From James Bovard at aier.org:

While the number of fatalities attributed to Covid-19 is carefully tracked by governments, few people have recognized how pandemic-spurred crackdowns have devastated democracy around the world. Emergency proclamations have entitled presidents and other government officials to seize vast new powers previously forbidden to them. Government bureaucrats became a new priesthood that could sanctify unlimited sacrifices merely by invoking dubious statistical extrapolations of future perils.

In October, Freedom House issued a report, Democracy under Lockdown – The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Freedom, which warned that since the pandemic started, “the condition of democracy and human rights has worsened in 80 countries.” Sarah Repucci, co-author of the report, warned that “governments’ responses to the pandemic are eroding the pillars of democracy around the world.” Abuses of power have been propelled by a presumption that government officials are entitled to all the power they claim to need to keep people safe. 

When the pandemic arrived in America, governors in many states responded by dropping the equivalent of a Reverse Neutron Bomb – something which destroys the economy while supposedly leaving human beings unharmed. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo set the standard when he effectively declared that he was entitled to inflict any burden on his state’s residents to “save just one life.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned people from walking or bicycling outside. More than ten million jobs were lost thanks to lockdowns, a major reason why life expectancy in the United States last year had its sharpest plunge since World War Two.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Governments, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda

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Texas boy, 12, hangs himself after battling depression amid COVID-19, by Yaron Steinbuch

Posted on February 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

They should keep a statistic for tragic deaths like this one—not caused by Covid-19 but by the response to Covid-19. From Yaron Steinbuch at nypost.com:

A 12-year-old Texas boy who felt “sad and lonely” amid the coronavirus lockdown measures hanged himself, his father revealed in a report about the tragedy.

Hayden Hunstable, of Aledo, took his own life three days before his 13th birthday in April 2020 because he didn’t know how to deal with the isolation and depression when the emerging disease caused a nationwide shutdown, the UK’s Metro reported.

The boy’s 9-year-old sister, Kinlee, found him hanged in his bedroom, according to the outlet.

Hayden’s heartbroken dad, Brad, 42, spoke to Metro to help prevent future suicides among the nation’s youth.

“COVID killed my son. I think Hayden would still be alive today if COVID had never happened,” the father of three told the outlet. “I had no idea he was struggling or depressed — he was such a happy kid and loved his friends and family.”

Calling the pandemic a “perfect storm for suicide and depression,” Brad said: “I think everything just got on top of him, he felt overwhelmed and he made a tragic decision.”

On April 17, he recounted, the water went out in the family’s home and Brad’s father came over and Hayden helped them fix the problem.

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Las Vegas Schools Forced To Reopen Amid Rash Of Student Suicides, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Hey guess what—the enforced isolation of children and adolescents during their socially formative years isn’t good for them. Who knew? From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A surge of student suicides across Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County School District to reopen schools as soon as possible, according to NYTimes. 

By December, eighteen students in the district had taken their own lives; an early-warning mental health system embedded within computers and tablets issued to students for remote learning received 3,100 alerts since schools shuttered their doors last March. 

“When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the Covid numbers we need to look at anymore,” said Jesus Jara, the Clark County superintendent. 

“We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope,” Jara said. 

Efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 across the country have led to drastic changes in the way children and teens learn and socialize. 

Government data show a 24% increase in the number of children who arrived in emergency departments with mental health issues from mid-March through mid-October, compared with the same period in 2019. 

Countrywide, tens of millions of students have been thrown into a new distance learning environment that has resulted in many extracurricular activities being canceled. Recreational spaces have closed, sports canceled, and playdates shifted to Zoom calls, resulting in many kids developing mental issues, especially in Clark County. 

Clark County administrators had GoGuardian Beacon alert system installed on every device given out to students after the sixth student suicide last year. The system alerted administrators of more than 3,100 cases where a student searched suicide-related material between June and October.

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Peer-Reviewed Study “Did Not Find Evidence” Lockdowns Were Effective In Stopping COVID Spread, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

Yes, you’re going to stop trillions to the trillionth power viruses which are about .15 micron with lockdowns, masks and social distancing. Except you’re not—the virus does what the virus does, regardless. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Liberals may be able to argue with Fox News or even Republican politicians. But what happens when a peer reviewed study comes out of one of their coveted and prestigious universities in California potentially showing that their collective reaction to Covid may have been completely worthless and, as a result, may have done exceptionally more harm than good?

Along those lines, it seems like a good idea to point out that a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford is questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study’s lead author is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.

“The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread,” according to Outkick, who published the report.

The study, co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya, studied the effects of NPIs in 10 different countries, including England, France, Germany and Italy.

And, when all was said and done, it concluded that: “In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020.”

In fact, the study found  “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”

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